1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to computer networks and to telephony. More particularly, this invention is directed to methods and systems for more efficient and effective communication and processing of electronic data in a call management and contact center system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Large businesses commonly service customers through call management and contact centers (herein after referred to as a “call center”). These call centers are staffed with support agents, interactive voice response recordings, and/or information systems to process customer inquiries across numerous communications devices and network infrastructures. Each week, hundreds, if not thousands or more, of incoming communications (including calls, emails, faxes, letters, and other communications) and associated data are received, accessed, and/or managed by the call center. The agent (or an automated call forwarding system) may forward/transfer the incoming communication and/or associated data to an extension of a designated party who can respond to the customer. The extension is typically associated with a physical location of a phone, such as a phone in the designated party's office or a particular location in a building. Oftentimes, the designated party is unavailable to receive the incoming communication and/or associated data because the designated party is away from the phone or because the phone cannot display or otherwise provide the associated data. For example, if the designated party is a doctor working in a large hospital, the doctor may be located at numerous locations throughout the day, such as in-service patient floors for rounds and/or emergencies, conference rooms for meetings, and clinic rooms for appointments/consultation. Thus, the doctor travels to multiple locations at different times throughout the day as inpatient service loads, meeting times, clinic schedule changes, and other changes make it difficult to have a predictable schedule and location. While most doctors carry paging devices, these paging devices tend to have limited service areas that restrict communications outside of a geographic area and limited functionality that restricts an incoming communication to a short text message such as a phone number. These paging devices also do not transmit communications and/or data back to the call center such as confirmations that the incoming communication was reviewed, location of the paging device (e.g., paging device of Dr. Roberts is located on 3rd floor/ICU section of Hawthorn building), and so on. Still further, most business people today tend to carry multiple communications devices, such as a pager, personal digital assistant (PDA), and cell phone. However, the call center of a business does not leverage the multiple communications devices of a designated party because each of these communications devices is customized in terms of software, hardware, and network configuration. For example, the PDA and the cell phone have different software applications, data processing, storage, management, and communications systems.
As discussed above, one of the biggest barriers facing a call center is locating and accessing multiple communications devices utilized by the staff of the call center. In addition, the incoming communications and associated data of the call center must be in a format that can easily be exchanged or otherwise shared with each communications device. For example, if the agent wants to share contact information (e.g., name, phone numbers, addresses, etc.) with a cell phone and a pager of a designated party, then the agent typically must enter this information twice—once on a platform communicating with the cell phone and once on a platform communicating with the pager. Another barrier is providing the incoming communication and/or associated data in a standardized or otherwise compatible data format, depending on functionality limitations of the communications device, so that each communications device has efficient and effective access to the information. For example, conventional wireless phones have limited functionality compared with personal computers (PC). Typically, wireless telephones provide limited contact information, such as a telephone listing by name rather than full address books and/or calendars. Additionally, conventional wireless telephones are unable to run application/software packages and may have limited capabilities for transmitting, receiving, and displaying video data.
To further complicate operations of the call center, most large businesses must work with several vendors who each provide only a portion of the required call management and contact center system. Further, these large businesses often do not have the technical staff to design, select, and integrate network(s), hardware and equipment, software, and/or develop customized applications. Even after a large business customer has purchased the required components, they have difficulty integrating these components into existing infrastructures, and most often, end up with several call centers that do not provide access to information and/or to staff across the entire enterprise. As a result, large businesses limp along with many different, non-integrated communications networks and call center systems.
Accordingly, large businesses need integrated call management and contact center systems and methods that can provide immediate access to resources (e.g., staff and data), improve operator productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and control costs. The integrated call management and contact center systems and methods must support various communications infrastructures to capitalize on emerging communications devices such as, for example, interactive pagers, on-site pagers, wireless phones, personal computers, etc. Consequently, the integrated call management and contact center systems and methods should enable sharing, transferring, and/or accessing staff and data over various communications devices while also complying with information system requirements of the business, such as security and fail-safe requirements.